UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
A Perspective on Developing a New Master Plan
Forty years ago, California faced a difficult dilemma as the first “tidal wave” of students
known as the “Baby Boom” approached college age and the state lacked the space or
coordination to handle them at its public postsecondary institutions. Leaders of the time
formulated the Master Plan for Higher Education in response to that impending crisis. The
Master Plan committed the state to providing universal access to postsecondary instruction
for all that could benefit from it.
Education once again commands the urgent attention of Californians. This time the focus
is K-12 and the crisis is not imminent—it is here. Numerous indicators tell the story of a
public school system with failures primarily in urban and rural communities that far
outweigh pockets of success in affluent metropolitan suburbs. The challenge now is to
provide all students with the educational opportunities that were taken for granted in prior
generations. The future strength of California—its economic, social, cultural, and
intellectual vitality—rests on restoring preeminence to the state’s elementary and
secondary school programs. At the same time the state needs to preserve its excellence in
higher education as it faces the challenge of enrolling unprecedented numbers of new
students over the next decade.
The University of California recognizes the reciprocal links that bind together its future
with the quality of public elementary and secondary education in the state. To craft a new
educational framework, UC believes policymakers should look at both the essential
elements of the original Master Plan as well as current imperatives for reform. Charting
the course that will best enable all members of our society to succeed in school, college,
and work is daunting. California faces overwhelming growth in the size and diversity of its
school age population, inadequate numbers of appropriately trained teachers to staff
classrooms, insufficient funds to update old schools or build new facilities, and no clear
lines of authority over K-12 curricula, standards, or evaluation. Given these circumstances,
how can the state plan to provide a high quality education for all residents?
To address this challenge, the state convened the Joint Committee to Develop a Master
Plan for Education, Kindergarten through University more than two years ago. The Joint
Committee appointed working groups with a broad range of experts from myriad
educational interests to examine issues in seven areas: governance, student learning, school
readiness, professional personnel development, finance and facilities, emerging modes of
delivery/certification/planning, and workforce preparation. The work groups submitted
reports to the Legislature in February and March 2002. The Joint Committee will develop
the new Master Plan beginning in April with a goal of completing deliberations before the
end of the legislative session in the fall of 2002.
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The University values highly efforts of the Joint Committee to initiate change across the
educational continuum. To assist committee deliberations, UC offers here its perspective
developing a new Master Plan to serve students from kindergarten through college.
Specifically,
(1) Policymakers should use the successful attributes of the original Master Plan for Higher
Education as templates for the new K-16 framework.
(2) Operating within this framework, the University of California intends to continue to
expand its efforts to partner with elementary and secondary entities for educational
improvement.
(3) The new Master Plan should preserve the strengths of California higher education built
over the last four decades as well as accommodate changing demands on public
postsecondary institutions.
LESSONS FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER PLAN
While successes of the existing Master Plan should not be the focus of current discussions,
authors of the new framework can draw lessons from it. The enduring strength of
California’s Master Plan for Higher Education derives from its clarity of purpose. It
defined state goals for higher education, assigned responsibility for achieving those goals,
provided the necessary authority and resources, and by linking those goals to very visible
and understandable commitments to the public, had a built-in mechanism of accountability.
The overarching state goal was “to provide educational opportunity and success to the
broadest possible range of citizens” at the postsecondary level. At the time, children of the
postwar “baby boom” were reaching college age and vast increases in college enrollment
were projected. Rather than devising ways to limit access to higher education, the Master
Plan committed California to one of most extensive promises any state government has
ever made to its citizens. The state chose to open up higher education to all Californians
who wished to attend.
Equally important was delineation of a clear strategy to achieve this goal. The Master Plan
differentiated the missions of each segment as a mechanism to contain costs and provide
broad access to higher education. By distinguishing functions and admissions pools, the
state reduced duplication of expensive programs and limited the number of high-cost
institutions. High-cost graduate programs were limited in a way that both saved the state
money and ensured their high quality. The state assumed responsibility for the costs of
instruction and adopted a realistic policy for imposition of other fees. Student financial aid
was expanded. All students could receive an education that was affordable.
In addition, the Master Plan ensured accountability for access by establishing a three-way
compact between the state, its institutions of higher education, and its citizens. California's
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public universities and colleges promised to guarantee a space to every high school
graduate and adult over the age of 18 who desired to attend. The Governor and Legislature
committed to funding all of these students. Taxpayers agreed to support these costs,
provided that institutions would end unnecessary program duplication and unwarranted
geographic expansion. Moreover, the Master Plan framework allowed students, parents,
and other residents to know what level of achievement was necessary to obtain admission
to a public institution and what level of resources was needed to attend.
CHANGING TIMES
Creating a new Master Plan with these elements will be challenging given that
circumstances of the day are extraordinarily different—more complex and more
constraining—from those present in 1960. While precipitous enrollment increases
characterize both periods, the quality of K-12 programs was assumed then and California
ranked highly on student achievement measures.
Today many students cannot pursue higher education because they are not adequately
prepared at the elementary and secondary levels. K-12 has been unable to provide a quality
education to large numbers of children because of exceptional growth in the state’s school
age population, growth in demographic groups that need additional attention (for example,
English language learners), and insufficient resources. California has too few qualified
teachers, inadequate facilities, and insufficient funds to succeed through current
approaches. Moreover, effecting change via K-12 finance mechanisms presents difficulties
since the responsibility to educate students is often distinct from the authority to raise
revenues in support of that effort. Collectively, these factors debilitate K-12 programs and
undermine the state’s commitment to higher education access. Too many of California’s
students receive a poor education that deprives them of any real opportunity to attend
college.
Other changes since 1960 complicate the level of coordination and resources necessary for
major educational reform. The state’s fiscal structure is not as supportive of public
services, local fiscal authority has been constrained by initiative and legal decisions, and
other state entities are much more competitive for state general fund support.
MAJOR ELEMENTS OF A NEW MASTER PLAN
To meet educational challenges in this environment, it is crucial that any new framework
include a clear sense of purpose, specific state goals, mechanisms to achieve goals set forth,
proper delineation of responsibility, authority, and accountability, and recognition of the
shared nature of responsibility for education. These features all worked very well in
distinguishing California’s system of higher education under the original Master Plan. The
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University believes it is imperative to blend these essential elements with new conceptions
of education to address the major issues facing K-12.
Accordingly, a new Master Plan should:
•
retain the three-way compact established forty years ago between California, its
educational institutions and the citizens of the state;
•
include broad statements of state policy that reaffirm the fundamental principles of
access and educational opportunity;
•
identify clear and attainable state goals for education;
•
develop strategies for achieving those goals that assign formal responsibility and
authority to the various educational entities without being overly prescriptive;
•
provide adequate resources or authority for obtaining resources to meet the goals;
•
imbed systems of accountability within the plan that monitor and encourage
progress toward meeting the state goals for education.
STATE GOALS FOR K-12: TO BE AMONG THE BEST IN THE NATION
As uniformly articulated by the Joint Committee and its working groups, the primary aim
of a new Master Plan is to provide a high quality education to all California residents. The
University supports this goal both for K-12 and higher education. We also recommend that
the new Master Plan better articulate this goal by stating that an indicator of its attainment
would be that California’s schools and K-12 student achievement rank among the best in
the nation by some future date.
However, because of the issues articulated above, the challenge in obtaining this goal will
be greater in the K-12 schools than in higher education. Because of that, we believe that
this review of the Master Plan needs to focus on K-12 and the ways in which all of
California education can come together to achieve state goals for K-12. To that end, much
of this paper articulates the ways in which the UC can partner with the public schools,
using its capacity and resources in productive ways to assist the state.
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FOUNDATIONS OF UC INVOLVEMENT WITH K-12
The magnitude of disjuncture between potential state goals for K-12 education and actual
student achievement necessitates the University’s active involvement in educational
improvement efforts. Indeed such involvement aligns with UC’s mission of—and historic
commitment to—public service. Founded as a land grant institution under the Morrill Act
of 1862, the University’s charter includes a mission of service to the state that, from its
inception, led UC to dedicate its resources to the key societal problems of the day. In the
late 19th century, a scarce food supply and access to natural resources were among the
state’s most critical problems. Thus, the University’s mission then focused on agriculture
and mining. Today, by almost any measure or public survey, the quality of K-12 schooling
ranks as among the most critical of California’s key societal issues and the University
needs greater engagement in addressing this issue.
In addition to public service, the University’s teaching and research missions provide a
basis for engagement with the public schools. UC is the primary research entity for
California and new knowledge promulgated by faculty in this endeavor can be applied to
education just as it is applied in many other fields. Whether investigating topics related to
individual students, teachers and administrators, elementary and secondary schools, or the
state school system as a whole, University faculty in education, psychology, public policy,
law and numerous related disciplines study issues relevant to the educational challenges
California faces today. UC’s interrelationship with K-12 is also born out in its teaching
mission. Many of the state’s teachers and administrators attend a UC campus to obtain a
baccalaureate degree in a discipline that provides the foundation for their preparation as
educators. The University is responsible for graduate instruction that provides the master’s
and doctoral level work for many professionals and leaders in the field of education.
Accordingly, the tripartite mission of teaching, research and public service obligate the
University to assist the state in addressing the issue of how to provide a high quality
elementary and secondary education for all California residents. UC must do its part to
make education an integrated endeavor from pre-school through college. The University’s
current involvement with K-12 includes a rich variety of activities—outreach programs,
professional development initiatives for teachers and administrators, collaboration on
curricular standards and assessment tools, teacher education programs, degrees in
educational leadership, and more. A number of University faculty and staff have dedicated
their careers to improving education for the state’s school children.
Without diminishing the importance of these efforts, the University has not until now made
a full, coordinated institutional commitment to addressing the quality of K-12 education.
The University of California can assist in improving K-12 education by offering its unique
strengths and resources in cooperation with the entities given primary responsibility for
K-12 education. The tools at UC’s disposal—research, new disciplinary knowledge,
faculty expertise, and instructional programs for educators—cannot solve all of the
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problems facing public schools in California. Nonetheless, they form the basis for the
University’s contribution to a K-12 educational improvement.
PRINCIPLES FOR UNIVERSITY ENGAGEMENT WITH ELEMENTARY AND
SECONDARY SCHOOLS
The future of the University of California is intimately tied to the quality of the K-12
education system and the extent to which the University can attract, retain, and graduate a
population of students who represent the rich diversity of California. More broadly
considered, UC must work to ensure that all state residents value the capacity of this
institution to contribute solutions to society’s most complex problems, contribute to the
overall welfare of this state, and provide essential societal goods. If vast numbers of
today’s young people grow up disenfranchised from higher education generally, and if they
remain skeptical of the University’s mission and fundamentally unaware of the public good
served by this or any other research university, then UC leaders have reason for concern.
As presently constituted, UC outreach is a necessary but not sufficient dimension of UC’s
work with K-12. The high profile focus on generating more diversity among collegebound high school graduates is an extremely worthy and important goal. However, this
focus does not address the full nature or magnitude of the challenges in K-12—the glaring
inequities in opportunity to learn and teacher quality, for example, which fall
disproportionately on poor students, students of color, and students whose primary
language is not English.
There is a need for UC to have a broader, deeper, more ambitious engagement with K-12.
The principles described below are compatible with and complementary to the University’s
outreach efforts, yet frame the challenges facing young people, K-12 educators, and
policymakers in a more comprehensive context. The ideas presented in this paper expand
upon a perspective advanced in the 1997 report of the UC Outreach Task Force, “New
Directions for Outreach.” Namely, the report noted that outreach was often viewed as “a
peripheral, rather than core, University function.” It recommended establishing facultybased research units to coordinate research, development, and evaluation of UC outreach
programs. By involving UC faculty more centrally in intellectual inquiry focused on the
learning continuum (K-12 through college and graduate instruction), such research units
could elevate the importance of outreach and other UC involvement with schools.
UC President Richard Atkinson recently affirmed the University’s progress toward
achieving this goal. In a message that accompanied the fall 2001 status report on UC
educational outreach and K-12 improvement programs, President Atkinson noted that,
since expansion of outreach efforts and with the support of the Governor and Legislature,
“faculty and staff on (UC) campuses have elevated outreach and drawn it into the academic
core of the University.”
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The principles outlined below build upon the aim of integrating all forms of K-12
involvement, into the core of University activities. They build upon ideas presented in a
comprehensive report prepared by the Advisory Committee for Planning Professional
Programs in Education at the University of California, chaired by Professor Jeannie Oakes.
That report, “A Call to Action,” (1993) is instructive in its clear presentation of problems
and recommendations for change.
1. UC’s academic and professional work in education should be dedicated to a mission of
research, teaching, and service that has as its highest priority the goal of ensuring equal
access, opportunity, and benefit to young people who have historically been least well
served in public schools and underrepresented in higher education.
2. The UC mission in education, once defined, must be comprehensive in its manifestations
and genuinely distinguish UC’s advanced degree and credential programs, induction and
professional development programs, policy studies, and research.
3. The faculty and programs of undergraduate preparation of students in the disciplines
must articulate in synergistic, mutually beneficial ways with the faculty and academic and
professional programs in education.
4. UC’s work with K-12 and its academic programs in education must build upon the
strengths of UC faculty—specifically (a) discipline-specific work devoted to the
development of academic content knowledge, (b) research and analysis, and (c) creative
and innovative approaches to complex problems.
5. UC professional development programs for educators must support the success of
teachers and administrators who are at once (a) employees of organizations that have
legitimate authority to require and expect certain actions and (b) independent professionals
who have their own interests, priorities, and points of view. UC must prepare and empower
teachers, principals, and others to be successful in both roles.
6. UC academic and professional programs in education must recognize and embrace the
knowledge of accomplished teachers and develop program structures that systematically
engage their expertise and experience.
7. In the context of its mission, UC must develop and enhance structures of accountability
for its academic and professional work in education with an unwavering public
commitment to assessing student and teacher outcomes.
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UC AS A PARTNER IN K-12 EDUCATIONAL IMPROVEMENT
To help create a new integrated Master Plan, the University of California intends to:
•
•
•
More effectively coordinate UC’s existing activities devoted to supporting K-12.
Initiate new efforts to help improve elementary and secondary education.
Better integrate into core University missions those programs of collaboration with and
assistance to K-12.
UC can draw on its strengths, applying these strategies to critical points of intersection with
K-12 for collaboration in these key areas:
Educational leadership: UC is committed to taking a number of actions to help meet the
need for educational leadership, including (a) expanding existing UC and joint CSU/UC
doctoral programs in education, (b) creating new programs to ensure that the Ed.D. is
available throughout the state and is accessible to working professionals, (c) assessing
regional needs for educational leadership with CSU and the other educational sectors, (d)
ensuring that UC programs are aligned with those needs, including the expansion of
educational leadership programs that may not result in a doctoral degree. The University
has reached a recent agreement with CSU to expand joint Ed.D. programs in this area and
continues to implement the new Principal Leadership Institutes. In addition, the University
is developing a new California Institute for Educational Leadership.
Teacher training: Just as high-quality faculty are the key to success in higher education,
having an adequate supply of excellent teachers is crucial to improving K-12. UC can
contribute to the quality of California’s teachers in a number of ways:
Increase enrollment in UC credential programs. UC is more than doubling the
number of credential enrollments for teachers and administrators as part of its
partnership with the state. While not specifying particular targets, the Master Plan
should anticipate how the state forecasts the overall number of teachers needed and
identifies those subject areas and geographic locations facing shortages. It should
enable the state to work with UC, CSU, and AICCU to set goals for teacher
credential production.
Provide high quality teacher credential programs with status similar to that of other
UC professional programs. Currently, the state regulates teacher preparation
programs to a degree not seen in other professions. UC supports efforts to ensure
that University teacher preparation programs are seen as high-quality, freestanding
professional programs linked to research and service. The state has a role in setting
requirements for the teaching profession, but it should not be directly regulating
higher education curricula through extensive course mandates. In addition, the state
should resist current attempts to make teacher training primarily an undergraduate
activity. Such a directive would not allow enough time for adequate preparation of
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prospective teachers in subject matter areas and pedagogy. It would also further
diminish the stature of teaching as a profession, setting teaching apart from other
professions such as law and medicine that require significant advanced study
beyond the baccalaureate.
Give UC undergraduates the opportunity to view teaching as a viable career option.
The University should pursue new and expand existing programs that encourage the
best and brightest students in the state to pursue careers as teachers at the
conclusion of their baccalaureate studies. Programs already in place include the
Community Teaching Fellowship. This program places undergraduate UC math
and science majors as teacher assistants in K-12 schools and has shown success in
exciting these students about teaching as a possible career choice. In addition, UC
should examine how widespread such programs are and how departments or
disciplines that offer students this type of teaching opportunity link to campus
service learning or community service programs
Offer creative, cutting edge teacher professional development. The University
should strive to be one of the state’s most credible and engaged providers of
professional development for teachers and administrators. Recognition of UC as a
provider of high quality professional development would derive from preeminence
in transmitting the latest findings for both disciplinary knowledge and pedagogy.
The University does not need to be the primary provider of professional
development, but it should be at the cutting edge of articulating effective strategies
for the state to implement to ensure that teachers are kept current in these areas.
Partner with K-12 to share subject matter expertise for both curriculum and
assessment. In addition to professional development, the University should work to
join its subject matter expertise with that of K-12 education professionals to
develop state policy on curriculum and assessment. Under the current scenario, the
state adopts curricular standards and assessments without sufficient or effective
dialogue between relevant K-12 and higher education interests. Similarly, some
educators and members of the state government feel that higher education
admissions and placement requirements are adopted without regard to their effect
on high school curricula and college preparation practices. Collectively, state
policy makers, K-12 educators, and disciplinary faculty in higher education need to
forge a more collaborative, consultative process for adopting new standards and
assessments.
Admissions policy and college preparatory curricula: The University’s admission
requirements align with those of the California State University and set a high standard for
student achievement at high school graduation, the culmination of students’ public
schooling. UC should maintain this high standard as well as its efforts to reach out and
provide assistance to disadvantaged students who face many challenges in meeting the
academic goals that enable them to attend college. As a related matter, the University
should work with K-12 educators to align high school assessments with faculty
expectations of competency in various disciplines.
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Research into effective student learning and best practices: UC should continue to use and
enhance its research capacity to identify effective student learning strategies as well as best
practices for teaching and administration that can be incorporated on effectively into
California’s large and diverse K-12 educational system. UC has significant capability in
this area—in each of the campus’s education schools, in multi-campus research units (such
as PACE, UC ACCORD, and the new leadership institute), and in numerous disciplines
outside of the education schools. UC should consider ways to better support, disseminate,
and translate this research in so that it can be of use to the K-12 schools.
Supplemental programs to encourage college going: Because they have the best
understanding of what is needed to gain admission to and succeed in college,
postsecondary institutions must invest in programs that apprise K-12 students, parents,
teachers, counselors and others of these requirements. The University has a variety of
programs to relay this information to various constituents—information on course-taking
patterns for middle and high school, how and when to apply to college, planning for
educational expenses, etc. In some cases, the aim of information dissemination efforts is
simply to acquaint some students with the notion of college attendance, especially for poor
and immigrant populations. Though such informational campaigns suffered some cutbacks
under recent budget constraints, the University continues to support informational outreach
along with other supplemental programs that encourage college attendance.
All the foregoing constitute ways in which UC can partner with K-12 to help improve
elementary and secondary education by strengthening existing links and establishing new
ties to students and schools. Cumulatively, these connections form a closer, reciprocal,
more effective integration of University programs with the whole of K-12 education.
While top-down governance changes may facilitate some specific cooperative efforts, the
faculty-to-faculty and campus-to-school linkages do much more to fuel improvement of
educational circumstances within the state. The school-University partnerships that have
been created in the last five years are an example of this approach. They provide new
foundations upon which ongoing collaboration can build—foundations which hopefully
will endure given the commitment of individuals involved, the personal relationships
formed, and the respect engendered for educators at all levels. The new Master Plan should
provide additional avenues and resources to form these links as well as incentives to make
them successful.
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HIGHER EDUCATION: BUILDING ON THE ORIGINAL
While K-12 commands primary attention in the context of current reform, a candid,
thorough assessment of Master Plan principles for higher education is necessary to
complete the review. Today’s most salient concerns will be addressed most effectively if
the state retains the vision captured in the best parts of the original Master Plan. Significant
elements of the landmark agreement—universal access and differentiation of mission and
function—are fundamental to the strength of state’s higher education system as a whole as
well as achievements of the respective segments.
Since 1960, changes in the demographic and fiscal environment create challenges for
maintaining the success of the original higher education Master Plan just as they impose
obstacles for K-12. For instance, college students today are very mobile. They are more
likely to exercise choice about the institutions they attend than were their counterparts forty
years ago. Given this circumstance, some policy options adopted in 1960 would not be
easy to implement now. The original Master Plan redirected 50,000 students from UC and
CSU to the community colleges. Both the mobility of today’s students and their exercise
of choice regarding college attendance would make it difficult to implement a similar
redirection now absent significant incentives. Moreover, today a college degree is
perceived as more important for entry into the workforce and as an essential component of
economic advancement. University research and graduate education are seen as more vital
to the state’s economic future. At the same time, increased competition for state funding as
well as the recent economic downturn have made state support for these functions less
certain.
Thus, there is a need to better delineate the state's goals for higher education beyond broad
statements about access and designation of distinct segmental missions. The reason the
1960 Master Plan worked so well is that there was a willingness to accommodate nearuniversal access by prioritizing access to each of the state’s educational institutions. To
develop a new master plan, there must be a willingness to state at the outset that different
paths will be developed for students seeking postsecondary education, and that the rules of
access to the various paths will be fair and well understood by the general citizenry. Before
the specific pathways are constructed, however, a clear, common understanding of
institutional and state higher education goals is needed.
The following Master Plan principles generally represent the overarching goals for higher
education in California:
ACCESS: Every Californian, regardless of place of residence within the state or
previous educational attainment, should have the opportunity to obtain a
postsecondary education.
AFFORDABILITY: Access to postsecondary education should be provided
regardless of income.
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QUALITY: Access must not be defined simply as having a place in a college or
university but rather it must be access to the opportunity to obtain a quality
education within that college or university.
The Master Plan mission statements for the respective segments of higher education equate
to the essential state goals for each. Accordingly, state goals for the University are
embodied in UC’s mission statement: research, teaching, public service—the creation and
transmission of knowledge, dissemination of knowledge, application of that knowledge in
service to society, repository and archive of accumulated knowledge, engine for economic,
social, and cultural development.
With these state goals and university missions in mind, UC should pursue positive change
and improvements in California’s educational system. Commenting on Master Plan
endeavors—old and new—places the University of California in a somewhat awkward
position. First, while UC wants the state to retain crucial elements of the original Master
Plan that have served California and the institution well, such defense is often mistaken for
advocacy of the “status quo.” Like other Californians, UC faculty, staff and students
clearly see the need for educational change. California must create better educational
opportunities for disadvantaged residents. To this end, the University values highly efforts
of the Joint Committee to initiate change across the educational continuum.
California now faces the challenges of a second tidal wave of students and significant,
rapid shifts in the state’s demography, economy and culture. We believe the new Master
Plan needs to reaffirm the aspects of the original Master Plan that have been successful as a
foundation for addressing some key issues facing the state. Specifically, we have identified
the following key issues that a new Master Plan should attempt to address:
1. How does the state accommodate Tidal Wave II? What recommendations does the
University have to ensure that this influx of students is guaranteed continued access to a
high-quality higher education? How do we ensure demographic and geographic diversity?
As noted, the original Master Plan provides a template for addressing the access issue. The
current challenge is to develop state support for the more than 700,000 additional
enrollments expected in the next decade. Assuming a robust economy, the state should be
able to fund access in the traditional sense, but it is unclear if there is the political will to
dedicate the necessary funding. The Master Plan should first and foremost seek to create
that political will for adequate state resources to support higher education. We urge the
Master Plan committee to develop an approach that ensures that the next generation of
students gets the same kinds of opportunities as were afforded the Baby Boom generation.
However, a new Master Plan should also contemplate other solutions for developing the
resources: new policies on fees, new alternatives for raising revenue, and consideration of
additional efficiencies to reduce costs. But the new Master Plan should not excessively
focus on efficiencies. It must recognize that knowledge is expanding in depth, breadth, and
complexity and educating future students will inevitably require an investment of more
rather fewer resources per student.
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2. Diversity and opportunity in higher education. California has become one of the most
diverse societies in the world. It is estimated that by 2005, one in every three Californians
will have been born outside the U.S. Nearly four in ten Californians speak a language
other than English in their homes. One in five K-12 students in the state are not proficient
in English.
Every segment of higher education is less diverse than the population or the K-12 schools.
Though amazingly diverse, UC has a smaller proportion of students from underrepresented
groups than CSU and the community colleges. The last two reviews of the Master Plan
focused heavily on increasing the number and proportion of underrepresented minority
groups in higher education. Proposition 209 prohibits the use of race or ethnicity as factors
in most decisions about access to opportunity in higher education and some of the prior
policies need revision or replacement. Thus, this Master Plan needs to look for creative
approaches to issues of diversity.
We would recommend that the new Master Plan embrace the path being pursued by the
University. To meet their responsibilities to a diverse and knowledge-based society, the
colleges and universities must choose the state's highest-performing students in ways that
are demonstrably inclusive and fair. We should do this by assessing students in their full
complexity, which means considering not only grades and test scores but also what
students have made of their “opportunities-to-learn,” the obstacles they have overcome, and
the special talents they possess. UC has moved in this direction via four proposals set forth
by President Atkinson: (1) comprehensive review of applicants for admissions; (2) a new
definition of eligibility (Eligibility in the Local Context) that considers the most worthy
students in every high school; (3) Dual Admissions, in which students are admitted by UC
and a community college simultaneously; and (4) changes in test requirements (including
the SAT I) that seek to align the tests with content actually taught. These proposals focus
on UC, but could be applied more broadly as state initiatives.
3. Explicit recognition of economic development as a state goal for higher education. The
current Master Plan does not state that one of the key functions of higher education is to
create the advances in knowledge that drive California’s economy. An increasingly
educated workforce is necessary to operate this knowledge-driven economy. The new
Master Plan should explicitly recognize these purposes of higher education and should
delineate responsibility for knowledge generation and workforce training. This recognition
should not come at the expense of higher education’s functions in social and cultural
development, but rather as recognition of higher education's unique importance to the
state's economy and fiscal health.
Once this goal for economic development is articulated, two other key issues emerge for
higher education:
4. Research and Graduate Education. The state will be hard-pressed to accommodate the
surge of undergraduates. How does California ensure that research and graduate education
are given adequate state support in an environment of fiscal constraint and enrollment
growth? Since 1960, the proportion of graduate students at the University has declined
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dramatically. The state needs to adopt policies that recognize that graduate students are
essential to the new economy and need to be supported by the state. Similarly, the state
should recognize that California’s pre-eminence in competing for federal and other
research support is a direct result of Master Plan policies that sought to explicitly identify
research institutions and support the faculty at those campuses with resources to ensure
they could carry out their research responsibilities.
5. Workforce preparation at both the advanced and entry levels. The state’s economic
needs mean that higher education needs to think carefully about preparing the future
workforce for the state and ensuring that it have the skills to compete nationally and
internationally. There are two areas the state should consider in a Master Plan:
Degree attainment. What are the state goals for individuals to receive various
degrees, certificates credentials? What proportion of the California population
should be obtaining baccalaureate (BA) degrees? Current data suggests that
California produces a low number of BA degrees but has a high percentage of BA
degree holders in its adult population. This suggests the state imports many of its
baccalaureate degree recipients. The state should set a goal to increase its
proportion of “home-grown” baccalaureate degree holders and to monitor not only
access to, but also degree completion in our colleges and universities.
General workforce preparation. While California clearly needs to set as a goal
increasing the numbers and proportion of Californians completing college, it also
needs to recognize that large numbers of students will enter the workforce prior to
completing college. How can the new Master Plan goals acknowledge vocational
and other forms of job training as a viable, productive alternate to postsecondary
instruction that provides the best mechanism to employ the human capital of a
significant share of the state’s population?
6. Quality of undergraduate education. As enrollment surges are accommodated, how do
we ensure a quality undergraduate experience for our students? As the state moves into a
new era of constrained resources, there will be pressures to increase student/faculty ratios
and reduce funding for student services. We believe the state and its colleges and
universities should continually examine the undergraduate experience and ensure that
students are well served with the resources we are devoting to their education. Research on
effective learning at the undergraduate level shows that residential education improves the
quality of the undergraduate experience. However, most reforms proposed in recent years
propose methods of educational delivery at odds with the residential education model.
Policy choices on methods of education needed to be informed by research and should
ensure that quality is not compromised for quantity.
7. Accountability. How should progress toward state goals be measured? Should
qualitative goals accompany numerical or statistical standards? Accountability was
achieved in the first Master Plan because clear delineation of responsibilities was coupled
with a clear understanding of the qualifications for access—if a student meets the
University of California
Master Plan Advisory Group
April 2002
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qualifications, they were entitled to a place in UC, CSU, or the community colleges and the
state agreed to fund that access.
One model of accountability that we would recommend as the basis for a new Master Plan
is the existing Compact/Partnership model in use for UC and CSU. Specifically, this
model establishes a two-way partnership between the state and higher education institutions
in which the state commits to an adequate and stable level of funding for higher education
in exchange for a commitment by the institutions to achieve specific outcomes in areas that
further state goals (e.g., providing access to all eligible students, reducing “time-to-degree,”
increasing the production of graduates in high-need areas like teaching and
engineering/computer science, etc). In a sense, this model functions as the year-to-year
implementation of the Master Plan. State goals are made explicit and institutional progress
is monitored. By linking achievement of the goals to explicit state commitments on
resources, it makes clear that reducing resources will have particular and usually adverse
consequences for the state. It establishes a baseline for state support. It also creates an ongoing dialogue on goals and the best strategies for achieving those goals.
TOWARD A NEW MASTER PLAN
The University welcomes the development of a new Master Plan for Education. It needs to
be informed by the original Master Plan for Higher Education, both substantively and as a
template for how a Master Plan can work. The educational institutions themselves need to
be involved in its development—no easy task considering the numerous and diverse
organizations that represent K-12 interests as well as the many entities concerned with
higher education.
Much of the existing Master Plan for Higher Education needs to be retained, but this paper
points to some new directions to pursue. The state needs to establish as a goal the
development of an excellent system of public elementary and secondary schools. The
University and the rest of California higher education stand ready to assist the state in these
efforts. Principles for higher education involvement in K-12 and interactions between
segments should be developed. Areas where the University can have a particularly useful
role are identified.
Higher education itself faces many of the same challenges and this paper seeks to define
those areas needing attention. Demography and resources will be a significant challenge,
but the Master Plan could become the vehicle by which the state and its educational
institutions make the case to the public that the future of California depends on adequate
and early investment in its educational infrastructure. In exchange, the schools, colleges,
and universities stand ready to deliver to Californians uniformly high educational
experiences.
University of California
Master Plan Advisory Group
April 2002
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University of California
Master Plan Advisory Group
Dennis Galligani
Associate Vice President
Student Academic Services
UC Office of the President
CHAIR:
Larry N. Vanderhoef
Chancellor
UC Davis
Eugene Garcia
Dean and Professor of Education
UC Berkeley
MEMBERS:
Joyce Justus
Chair, Education Department
UC Santa Cruz
Stephen Arditti
Assistant Vice President
State Governmental Relations
UC Office of the President
Richard Attiyeh
Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of
Graduate Studies
UC San Diego
Manfred Kusch
Chair, University Committee on Educational
Policy
Senior Lecturer
Department of French & Italian
UC Davis
Clifford Brunk
Chair, Coordinating Council for Graduate
Affairs
Professor and Co-Chair
Organismic Biology, Ecology and Evolution
UC Los Angeles
Meredith Michaels
Associate Vice Chancellor
Planning & Budget
UC Santa Cruz
William Parker
Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of
Graduate Studies
UC Irvine
Joseph Castro
Executive Director
Campus Outreach Initiative
UC Santa Barbara
Dorothy Perry
Chair, Board of Admissions and Relations
with Schools
Vice Chair, Preventative and Restorative
Dental Sciences
UC San Francisco
Bruce Darling
Senior Vice President
University & External Relations
UC Office of the President
Paul Drake
Dean, Division of Social Sciences
UC San Diego
Robert Polkinghorn
Assistant Vice President, Educational
Outreach
UC Office of the President
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Celeste Rose
Vice Chancellor for University Relations
UC Davis
Michael Young
Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs
UC Santa Barbara
David Warren
Executive Vice Chancellor
UC Riverside
Julius Zelmanowitz
Vice Provost, Academic Initiatives
UC Office of the President
STAFF:
Todd Greenspan
Coordinator, Educational Relations
Academic Initiatives
UC Office of the President
Hilary Baxter
Principal Analyst
Academic Initiatives
UC Office of the President
Vincent Stewart
Principal Analyst
State Governmental Relations
UC Office of the President
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